The Oedipus complex, also known as the Oedipal complex, describes a child's feelings of desire for their opposite-sex parent and jealousy and anger toward their same-sex parent. The concept was first introduced by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual stages of development.
“Daughters often look to their mothers as role models and understandably want their mothers' support and approval. When their mothers are unable to provide that support and approval, daughters can experience feelings of emptiness or anxiety.”
A toxic mother-daughter relationship is a dysfunctional relationship that can be detrimental to your physical, mental, or emotional well-being. It can manifest in various ways and is not something that just develops out of the blue.
Many times the root of the conflict is the mother whose heart does not recognize that a daughter is "grown." When a mother fails to acknowledge her daughter's adulthood, a family rift can occur. Family rifts that are not repaired can lead to grandparents being estranged from their grandchildren, once children are born.
Teens pull away from their parents due to a biological instinct to separate themselves in preparation for adulthood. If a teen pushes their parent away, it is often because they feel secure in the relationship and therefore take it for granted temporarily.
The mother wound is the cultural trauma that is carried by a mother – along with any dysfunctional coping mechanisms that have been used to process that pain – and inherited by her children (with daughters generally bearing the brunt of this burden).
Mommy issues in women
Difficulty trusting others/commitment issues. Having very few female friends. Feeling like you must do everything perfectly. Avoiding anything having to do with your mother.
Blaming you for everything is how she is trying to assert herself. Self-respect can make or break you. If your daughter is low on self-respect, she may resent you for what she feels about herself.
Traits Of A Healthy Mother-Daughter Relationship
The mother-daughter duo recognizes and respects boundaries. They make reasonable commitments to each other and come through on them. They accept each other the way they are rather than forcing them to conform to a particular set of ideals.
Jealousy happens in childhood – it's a normal human emotion. It's usually an expression of anger and possessiveness and happens when a child sees their value as being threatened. However, when it hangs around and starts to grow, the results can be anything from mildly annoying to absolutely catastrophic.
The cause usually lies in childhood
Many of the highly jealous people have experienced attachments as insecure in their childhood. Even as adults, they constantly fear being abandoned. This fear is so dominant that it manifests itself in delusions of control and jealousy.
Emotionally absent or cold mothers can be unresponsive to their children's needs. They may act distracted and uninterested during interactions, or they could actively reject any attempts of the child to get close. They may continue acting this way with adult children.
As strange as it sounds, negativity and complaining are ways your child manages their anxiety. When your child complains, they feel better because they're expressing themselves and venting their worries and fears. If you don't react to it from your own anxiety, your child will eventually move on.
Usually, when a child is constantly blaming and the parent is feeling hurt and helpless, the problem is that the parent isn't validating the child's experience and instead is responding defensively. A daughter who blames mom is trying to show mom that she's in distress and needs help.
Kids Use Victim Mentality To Justify Their Behavior
You'll often see kids blame others and point the finger at someone else when you hold them accountable for their behavior. They often see themselves as the victim, no matter how aggressive or abusive their behavior is.
The Mother Wound is an attachment trauma that creates a sense of confusion and devastation in the child's psyche. It instills deeply rooted beliefs that make the child feel unloved, abandoned, unworthy of care, and even fearful of expressing themselves.
Definition: A group of feeling-toned ideas associated with the experience and image of mother. The mother complex is a potentially active component of everyone's psyche, informed first of all by experience of the personal mother, then by significant contact with other women and by collective assumptions.
If you're the daughter of a toxic mother, it's likely that you grew up feeling unsupported, unloved, and unworthy. This deep sense of inadequacy can lead to a number of problems in adulthood, including codependency, low self-esteem, and difficulty setting boundaries.